When I was very young I would wake up in the middle of the night from a particular dream that I could not escape. It would begin innocently enough with the arrival of a soft drumbeat. The drumming would grow louder and louder until I found myself in a forest standing at a distance behind an odd looking old man sitting on a rock by a river. He would be sitting peacefully in a lotus position crowned in an incredible headdress filled with colors of fire and light. The drumming would continue to get louder until the pinnacle moment of the dream when he would turn his head to face me. He had a look about him of hope and knowing but at my young age I couldn’t bear it any longer. I would awaken in a panic, sweat rolling down my cheeks, and my heart racing.

Experience and attachment always influence perceptions. I’ve fallen victim to shortsightedness on numerous occasions in both my personal and professional life, and you might venture a guess that it rarely produced positive outcomes.

“The Market for Something to Believe In Is Infinite." - Hugh Macleod
If you attend a River Dogs baseball game in Charleston, SC (home of the New York Yankees Single “A” farm team), you’ll no doubt encounter a man named “Tony the Peanut Man” selling peanuts. He’s an older gentleman with a smile as wide as the distance between first and third base. He bounds through the park with energy and life, while families and friends buy his peanuts in mass quantities.

His name was Michael, and at 14 years of age he already lived longer than you and I combined. The first day I opened his case file it read like a Stephen King novel. Michael’s story began years earlier and unfolded like a bad movie that should never have been made. At the age of six, he lived alone with his drug-addicted mother, drowning in a sea of chaos.